Laser Projection

LAPlaser have appointed Assyst Bullmer to supply their extensive range of laser guidance and projection systems.

These are gaining acceptance within the composites industry but are also applicable to manufacture of boats, wind turbines, aeroplanes and other structures where positioning of 2D shapes onto other 2D or 3D shapes is required.

The guidance offered by LAPlasers can reduce assembly times by 40%, improve accuracy and quality. In industries such as wind turbine blades or aircraft wings very large laser guidance arrays enable a team of assemblers to work simultaneously on the same job.

iSize wins Texprocess Innovation Award

The iSize interactive body dimension portal by Human Solutions has been won the Texprocess Innovation Award. The solution won the award thanks to its high degree of innovation.

ISize makes available the body dimension data of more than 100,000 European, North American and Asian men, women and children between the ages of 6 and 75.

On the portal at www.i-size.net, companies can select their individual target group by age, standard size or region, optimize their sizes table based on up-to-date body dimensions and determine size & fit-related market potential.

The adapted sizes table can then be directly transferred to cad.assyst for pattern adaptation and grading.

2011 is the first year that the Texprocess Innovation Award has been introduced. Altogether eight trendsetting solutions were honoured. The winning products were presented in a special ceremony at the Texprocess in May 2011.

iSize is especially valuable to companies who want to understand the size of potential customers they will be selling their garments to in export markets.

2010 results

Accounts for 2010 have been filed with Companies House. Profit is significantly higher than 2009 on similar turnover, the order book at 31st December is up over 100% on the year before.

Composites Engineering Show

Assyst Bullmer will exhibit at the Composites Engineering Show 9/10 November 2011 at the NEC

TexProcess

Assyst Bullmer will be at the Texprocess show in Frankfurt 24th to 27th May 2011

http://texprocess.messefrankfurt.com/frankfurt/en/besucher/messeprofil.html

JEC Exhibition

Assyst Bullmer will be exhibiting at the JEC show in Paris 29th-31st March 2011.

http://www.jeccomposites.com/agenda/5647/composites-show.html

This is the leading composites show worldwide and Assyst Bullmer will be on stand U8

Assyst Bullmer Ltd reports a successful 2009

Assyst Bullmer Ltd has filed annual accounts for the year to 31/12/2009 at Companies House. The year was profitable and turnover increased 7% over FY2008. The Apparel market accounted for 51% of sales, Technical Textiles 32% Automotive 9% and Upholstery 8%. UK sales were 94%, exports 6%.
“Considering the effects of the global economic crisis on our markets and the uncertainty this produced, this was a solid performance for the year” said David Bell, Director. “The expansion of our product range to include 3D Body Scanners, tailoring, size survey and body fit software from Human Solutions is already helping our growth in 2010”

Assyst Bullmer at ASBCI Lingerie and Swimwear Seminar

Dr Jochen Balzulat and Alison Denison presented “Tackling the Technologies” at the ASBCI lingerie and swimwear seminar in Grantham in April. In 1994 a manual survey of 10,000 women was undertaken and in 2009 14,000 women were measured, during that period the women had grown by 1cm in height, bust and hips. This underlines the need to have detailed information on your target market using 3D bodyscanners.

Assyst Bullmer invited to Buckingham Palace

Assyst Bullmer were delighted to receive an invitation to the Reception for the British Clothing Industry held in Buckingham Palace on March 16th. 350 guests from all areas of the industry including designers, models, retailers and manufacturers were invited. Assyst Bullmer were honoured to represent the technology supply side of the industry. Commencing with a formal introduction to both HM the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh the reception was a memorable evening. It was good to have a chance to meet so many colleagues and customers: everyone agreed it was a wonderful event.

Topcut buys Bullmer

TopCut GmbH purchased all property and assets of Bullmer Spezialmaschinen GmbH, Mehrstetten on 1st July 2009. Bullmer is a leading manufacturer of automatic cutters and spreading machines for the clothing and textile industries, established for 75 years in Germany. The two merged companies will trade under the name Topcut-Bullmer.

Anton Stahl, the Managing Director of Topcut Bullmer said “Bullmer customers could always rely on a trustworthy and competent partner in terms of product quality and of customized machine developments. TopCut is a leading manufacturer worldwide for automated leather cutting systems and operates successfully in the field of automated processes of technical fibres and composites. The strengths of both companies are brought together in a joint market performance.

I was previously Managing Director of Bullmer until July 2005 and so I am fully aware of the expertise that exists within the company. the complete research and development departmen is maintained and additionally merged with the R&D resources of TopCut. This internal competence-centre will not only assure and boost the production site located in Germany but also provides a solid base for the new company.” http://www.topcut-systems.de/english/about.htm

Human Solutions buys Assyst

28th May 2009 Human Solutions GmbH acquired all the software products, software related services and hardware supplies of Assyst GmbH. As of that date the new Managing Director is Dr Andreas Seidl. Humans Solutions is based in Kaiserlautern, Germany.

Assyst GmbH will remain an independent company with its registered offices in Dornach, near Munich. “Human Solutions and Assyst have had an intensive and trusting working relationship in different business spheres for several years now”, says Dr Seidl. “The products in the company’s key segments, Computer Aided Design (CAD), Product Data Management (PDM) and automarker.com play a decisive role here, since they are already being used in the production of several thousand customers all over the world.

The associated business units of Development, Sales and Support will therefore be retained and successfully further developed. Thanks to the absorption of all the company's key personnel, close co-operation on the product and sales/technical levels and a new organisation, which will utilize the synergies of both companies, we have achieved the best possible scenario for successful cooperation – and our customers will reap the benefits of this. The complete value-added chain in the apparel industry can now be supplied – from the shop to product development and the pattern-making team.

This takeover has created one of the largest, Germany-wide specialist suppliers for the apparel sector.” Human Solutions is a leader in 3D body scanning and the realistic simulation and integration of anthropometric/ergonomic data into product development. It has more than 300 customers, including well-known companies such as Karstadt, Odermark, Selfridges, the US and Swiss armies, car firms Jaguar, BMW and Volkswagen, and the aircraft builder Airbus Industries.

Zund Cutters

Assyst Bullmer Ltd have been supplying Zund cutters to UK companies for over 10 years. Zund cutters are manufactured by Zund Systemtechnik in Switzerland. Most of the Zund cutters we supply are conveyorised as this is well suited to our markets, though fixed tables are also available. Zund cutters are used to cut products as varied as covers (see photo), made to measure tailoring, aerospace composites, aircraft ducting, upholstery, Formula 1 and other racing cars, clothing and soft play equipment.

Assyst Bullmer also provides blades, service, spares and cutting belts for all Zund cutters. Many Zund blades can be re-sharpened which is a particularly economical and popular service, contact Assyst Bullmer to see about re-sharpening your blades.

Premiumcut

One of the key principals of the continuing development of the Premiumcut is that it should be adaptable to process, to cut differing types of material depending on the application. For this reason over recent years developments have taken the machine in the direction of offering a modular tool system, this allows the user to interchange tools or even carry out several tasks with different tools in one production run. The benefit of all this being reduced production times, with high material usage and less finishing required.

"Increasingly we find we are asked to provide a machine which will carry out a wide range of processes and tasks. This can be anything from cutting PVC to thick carpet with heavy rolls or from printing recognition marks to sanding materials such as Hypalon©, used in inflatable boat manufacture. At the same time we are building machines required to do all this while maintaining Assyst Bullmer's high nesting and material utilisation capabilities."

2007 has seen the introduction of new features to the machine which now includes a full range of knife cutting tools. The most popular options being the electrically oscillating knife, the pneumatic knife, the driven rotary blade and the routing head. The new additions to the Premiumcut include the grinding mechanism for sanding and the ultrasonic cutting tool, used to melt and seal a material to prevent fraying once it's been cut.

"Our aim is to allow businesses to invest once and cut everything on a machine which is robust and strong enough to handle a full production environment. As a company our capabilities are required to be as varied as our customers'. We want operators to be able to set the machine running and have only minimal personnel at its control, required only to monitor progress and offload parts after being cut."

In addition to cutting machinery Assyst Bullmer also develop and sell other machines such as feeding cradles to unroll and automatically feed material onto the conveyor, this particularly useful for materials which are hard to unwind or have a tendency to stretch or come off the roll unevenly. Another department of the company also develop an in house range of CAD software targeted especially at fabric engineering for pattern design, nesting and cut optimisation.

PVB and SGP Glass cutting

Assyst Bullmer has developed a cutter for safety glass. The Cad software automatically uploads the job list of shapes to be cut, nests the shapes for maximum efficiency a Premiumcut cuts and identifies each component. As glass manufacturers have a variety of shapes to cut on any one day Assyst Bullmer’s nesting can save significant amounts of material.

Cutting and grinding

Manufacturers of inflatable boats (RIBS) and other products made with laminates such as Hyperlon need to grind the surface at seams in order to roughen the surface and allow the bonding glue to adhere to the Hyperlon. Some users of rubber also need to buff the surface of the rubber prior to joining or vulcanising. As a manual process this is a fairly unpleasant, dirty job requiring containment with operators equipped with dust masks. Buff lines are often parallel sided whereas the manual tools grind in a circular motion so resulting quality can be variable.

Assyst Bullmer have developed a unique grinding device that fits on the Premiumcut that roughens the material surface top a precise depth. Linked with the grinding system are an automatic height adjustment to maintain and even depth of grind and integrated dust removal system.
The system is already in use at a leading UK RIB manufacturing company

Automatic Nesting

Assyst Bullmer's automatic nesting service, www.automarker.com is finding success with a growing range of applications. The majority of users nest patterns to cut out of textile but recently users have been nesting products such as graphic signs, lampshades, composite aircraft wing components, furniture laminate and artificial grass.

Most companies with patterns available on CAD are able to use www.automarker.com as shapes can be nested in many common formats, often the CAD systems used by these customers are very competent 3D or 2D packages but the nesting capabilities of automarker have yielded large material savings.

Assyst Bullmer, Zund, Algotex & Ioline

Assyst Bullmer integrate machinery from companies such as Algotex, Zund, Ioline in the systems we supply to customers.

Assyst Bullmer have been selling cutters from Zund Systemtechnik for over 10 years and have many installations throughout the UK. Zund are renowned for high accuracy. Zund cutters are in use in diverse industries such as carbon fibre composites for motor racing and aerospace, upholstery, soft play equipment, inflatables, gaskets, carpet cutting and clothing manufacture.

Assyst Bullmer's engineers have been Zund factory trained in Switzerland, and provide training and service. All spare parts are also supplied and the re-sharpening service for Zund knife blades is particularly economical.

Algotex ink jet plotters are in use to plot wide format markers, typically 1.5m-2m wide. The Streamjet uses standard HP cartridges for easy supply and economical running. Assyst Bullmer engineers have been trained at the Algotex factory in Bologna.

Part Marking with inkjets

Most single ply cutters have a marking capability to identify cut components, ensure traceability or mark attachment points. Ink jets are increasingly required as the speed of inkjet application allows quick processing. Assyst Bullmer can mount inkjets to work in a single direction, which can be very cost effective, or to rotate and print in any direction.